well i guess i found my match, lit it and went up in flames.

I suppose I should have enjoyed it
when he called me baby, put his hand
on my thigh but you were all I could
think about. You drove me home,
clutched my hand the whole time
as if it was impossible to think of even
letting me go. I could feel the reluctance
jam against my fingers.

I suppose I should have enjoyed it
when he struggled to get my clothes off, all the
shit
fuck
damn
and the metal bed frame smacking the wall,
our skin slamming together in a classic fight
for dominance but you were all I could think
about. This was not slow, coincidental or
innocent and I’m afraid that I’m much more
determined to distance myself than you first
imagined.

We can’t even look at each other now.
I stare down at the concrete or take out my phone,
my preoccupation almost convincing but not quite.
I remember when you restored my faith in a
decaying and meaningless institution, revived
childish dreams of suburban houses and minivans.

But I went back to him and continued the fight
against monogamy, the war against your indecision
even though I’m sure you never recognized
all the bombs dropped, all the small battles riddled
with passive aggressive sparring.

I lined that dream up with its face to the wall
and shot it down like a prisoner of war when
stumbling out of his room became a common
occurrence. The shame clawed at the back of
my brain but it’s too late to stop now, because
I’m not the marrying kind.

i found you in between the pages, cracked and old and broken, remembering the past just barely but enough.

don't follow me. it's been months and you're still haunting me. sometimes i think i see you in the corner of my eye, just out of sight. but you are never out of mind. i've had a lot of bad habits but for some reason you keep coming out on top of that deck of cards that also have rehab, let's smoke some more, and fuck it, let's fuck. but i know it wasn't me. this time, it was you. you let the water creep in the cracks, the mildew build up. i just had to get on my knees and scrape you away. try to salvage what was still left. sometimes i wonder what would have happened if things had ended up just so; but i know that things ended up just so because we are in too different frames of reference. mine is fast, moody, ever changing. you are my spider veins and my back aches. but i've learned a few things since you and i know i can never give up who i am. there is no compromise left in my body.

it's been two since you but it's still all the same, a letdown and a name

I woke up this morning feeling like
everything fit together, a map that was
redrawn, redefined and the cold sheets
unraveled an ancient mystery. Suddenly

I was smothered by fall, sad and somber,
the leaves changing over, all without my
consent. I want to command something
in my life, whether it is the harsh winds

or the grades I receive, head filling up
just to forget in the next breath. If I could
count each freckle on your back and
drown out the sounds of bed frames

hitting the walls I know I’d remember why
we stopped smiling at each other. The bottoms
dropped out of all the glasses, and your
occupation is picking all the little pieces of

me up off the floor. Instead you wander
drunkenly between the two dirty rooms,
laughing slowly while I’m upstairs
forsaking God and lighting cherries on fire.

There are worse ways to puncture holes
In my soul, letting the air out of a balloon
To float away while the animal shaped clouds
And the azure of the sky eat its skin alive.

daddy remixed

Paper trees catch fire, jumping from limb to limb.
He would be ashamed if he knew. What he knew
was addiction, how to avoid it. Platter full of winter
snow but he made damn sure to close off his nose.

No, his vice was ordinary dark wood bars
scuffed and pitted, last call never really
ending anything at all since all of his days
and nights bled into each other, the Independent
in the rain over his head spilling the ink all
over his hands.

But a child made him responsible,
a little girl with a mean red grin that
he barely ever saw working four jobs
and one still at the bar.

Every Sunday morning they ate toasted egg bagels
with butter and enjoyed getting to know each other
all over again because it was the Lord’s Day. When
she was older, she sometimes saw his
twentysomething self peek through those
hazel eyes with the crows feet at the corners.

“You’re never gonna go to college and
make something of yourself. You’re a
fucking failure, eating up my money and
wasting my time.” Sometimes she cried
in her bed at night, muffling her face in her pillow,

wondering if he was right.

I wake up covered in you

Some nights I dream a sea of naked bodies
entangled barbed wire all sleep fitfully
together. We sweat out the long hours
twitching little rabbits wishing we had
less fur. Sometimes He pours gasoline over
us and lights the match of eternity.

I wake up alone ashamed and small
curled into a ball with these dark sheets
in this dark room knowing that I will be
twitching and insomnia ridden for
the next few days.